The 3 Stages of Salvation

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit (Romans 8:1 KJV).”

We all deserve eternal condemnation and punishment. This is the ultimate truth of the human condition. Ever since Adam and Eve’s first sin, human history has been full of wickedness, hatred, and all forms of injustice. This is demonstrated in secular history, as well as throughout God’s Word. Even God’s chosen nation of Israel has a story of constant rebellion. However, calling all people to ever exist a bunch of screw-ups is a tough pill to swallow, quickly provoking feelings of anger, offense, and defensiveness. The problem is that many would quickly try to justify themselves or others by listing the good things they have done or why their sinful actions were “not so bad.” God’s Word makes it clear that these excuses mean nothing. We cannot be made righteous by our good work, instead, we must be justified through the work of Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16). Ephesians 2:8-9 shows that we receive salvation by God’s grace, through our faith. Last month’s post, “An Introduction to Sin and Salvation” covered in more detail what sin is and why we need a Savior. This post will dig more deeply into how Christ saves us. Through Biblical study, we can find that Salvation has three aspects: justification, sanctification, and glorification. While you will not find these three words grouped in this manner directly in Scripture, breaking salvation down like this helps us to understand God’s work in our lives more fully.

To begin, we will look at how Christ justifies us. Justify is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “to judge, regard, or treat as righteous and worthy of salvation [4].” As has been established, we as human beings cannot attain righteousness on our own. Before Christ’s atoning work on the cross, it was established that blood was necessary to atone for sins. The reason for this goes back to the very first sin in the Garden of Eden, by which Adam and Eve realized and were ashamed of their nakedness (Genesis 3:9-10). Why were they ashamed of their nakedness? Perhaps this reaction was a physical representation of their spiritual state after sin. After eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their spiritual eyes were opened. This made them aware of the fact that they had disobeyed the singular command that God gave them (Genesis 3:7). As they chose to rebel against their Creator, they could no longer be covered by His holiness, leaving them aware that they were physically and spiritually exposed. Many people today seem to think that the simple act of eating fruit or the basic desire for knowledge was not unreasonable. These are the same people who would curse God for daring to punish people whose only sin was trying to become more like Him. But that is the very trick of the Devil. He takes a good thing, twists it, and stokes the flame of your desire for that thing to the point that you are willing to believe a lie to achieve it. The desire to gain knowledge and become more like God was not Adam and Eve’s sin. Their sin was in their choice to usurp God’s authority to gain their desire.

To cover Adam and Eve’s shame, both physical and spiritual, God made them clothing of skins (Genesis 3:21). While the Bible does not clearly say that God killed an animal as a “sacrifice” to cover their sin, God now required them to cover their nakedness. Animal sacrifice as an offering to God is established in Genesis 4 and throughout Genesis. This tradition became law in Israel at the time of Moses. In Leviticus 17:10-11, God makes it clear that life is in the blood. Israel was forbidden to eat meat that still had blood in it as a symbol of the sacredness of life. This is also why we can see so many laws in Leviticus about different types of animal sacrifices- because the life in the blood was required to atone for sin. This concept of one life given to atone for another is called substitutionary atonement.

The problem was that the substitutionary atonement of animal sacrifice was only temporary. The life of a beast was not sufficient to erase a person’s sins permanently. The process was to be repeated regularly. And no matter how Israel worked, they proved they could not consistently follow the Old Testament Law and attain righteousness. While we cannot explain why God chose this method of substitutionary atonement, we can rejoice in the fact that His holiness and His understanding are much above our own. He provided a way for the debts of those who freely choose Him to be redeemed. As the Gospels show, God descended to the Earth and humbled Himself by taking on the form of mankind in the person of Jesus Christ. As Philippians 2:8 shows, this humility that Christ took upon Himself was not limited to simply looking like a human being, He had to eat and sleep, deal with temptation, and suffer pain up to and including death. He dealt with all of this in the same way that the rest of humankind has, yet He did not sin. Because Christ was sinless, He was able to take on the substitutionary role as the sacrifice to cover all sin rather than the temporary justification of animal sacrifice.

To fully address the concept of justification, it would be best to briefly address a few false teachings surrounding Christ’s nature that have been prevalent throughout history. First, it must be stated that Christ was both fully human and fully God. This duality in Christ’s nature is referred to as a hypostatic union [1], which simply means that his two natures were perfectly united in one person. His nature as God was inseparable from His nature as a human being. He gave up much of His divine power and omniscience when He became human, yet He never ceased to be God (1 Timothy 2:5, Philippians 2:7, Hebrews 4:15). This Biblical fact about Christ’s perfect dual nature goes against such false teachings as Modalism, the Gnostic teaching of Docetism, Arianism, and Adoptionism. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but for the sake of brevity, these are the only four that will be addressed in this post.

Modalism (also called the Oneness movement) teaches that God is one person who, depending on His current goals or relationship with mankind, manifests as Father, Son, and Spirit: not three persons in one Godhead (the Trinity)[3]. This belief holds that God the Father did not send the Son from Heaven, but that He became the Son. Docetism is the belief that Jesus was never physically human at all, rather He only a spirit who appeared to be physical [5]. Thus, all of His temptation and suffering were only part of His masquerade as a real person. Arianism is similar to Modalism in that it denies the Trinity, but it differs in that it does not state that God manifests in different forms. Instead, Arianism states that Christ is not united with the Father as an eternal, equal part of the Trinity, rather He is a created being (though still divine and above humanity), more like a demi-god of mythology than equal with God [6].  Adoptionism also states that Christ is a created being, but it differs from Arianism in its teaching that Jesus started as a normal human, with no divine nature. According to adoptionism, God elevated the man Jesus of Nazareth to His status as the Son of God and the Messiah because of Jesus’ perfect obedience to God’s will [7].

My reason for mentioning these heresies is that they all cheapen the true justifying work of Christ by changing different Biblical aspects of God and His relationship with humanity. I also wanted to address these teachings because they can all be found in different forms still today. I cannot go through a thorough defense against these false teachings in this post, but it will suffice to say that a careful, literal reading of the Gospels breaks all of these down (See John 1 for a good starting point). One does not have to jump through theological hoops to understand the true Gospel, but that is necessary for any of these heresies to be true.

To summarize justification, Christ took upon Himself the punishment that we deserve as sinners. He descended from Heaven and lived as the only perfect person, both God and man in a single being. His substitutionary atonement on the cross became the ultimate sacrifice: His blood poured out in His love for us, covering our sins so that we can have peace with God (Colossians 1:19-20, 1 Peter 4:8). A good analogy to finish this concept is that of a courtroom. All human beings have committed crimes against God (Romans 3:23), and therefore deserve punishment. As criminals, we stand before God, with our guilt brought to the forefront by Satan, our accuser (Revelation 12:10). Our actions align with his accusations, and we stand ready to receive our doom. There is no way we can get out of this situation on our own, no good work we can do to make up for our actions, and no justifiable defense. Yet we can take all the work and authority over our lives out of our own hands and lay them at the feet of Jesus Christ, who stands at the right hand of God the Father (Romans 8:34). If we choose to put this faith in Him, He will silence Satan’s accusations and show that He has taken our punishment upon Himself, instead clothing us with His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).Thus, Christ’s sacrifice has justified us, wiping our sins away through God’s grace. Justification takes place at the moment of our salvation. On our part, no work can be done, no words can be said, and no action can be taken to accomplish salvation. We need only to have faith in Christ as our Lord and Savior. Contrary to some beliefs, this belief in Christ, the choice to have faith in Him is not a “work” that we must perform. It is the opposite of work, accomplished by taking the authority over our lives out of our own hands and putting it into Christ’s. We earn no glory and no right to boast of what we did to earn our salvation, for all the work was and is done by Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8-10).

The other two aspects of salvation are sanctification and glorification. My explanation of these will be very brief, as the first portion of this post has already been very lengthy. To be sanctified is to be “set apart to a sacred purpose or to religious use,” and “free from sin” [2]. As the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy of Holies were set apart to be kept pure and separate in the Tabernacle of the Old Testament, so are those who are justified by Christ to be (1 Thessalonians 5:23). This is simply said, but difficult to put into practice. When we are saved, Christ justifies us before the Father, but this does not mean that we are no longer human in nature. We are called to strive to be like Christ, laying down our sinful nature and taking on that of Christ (Ephesians 4:22). This is a process, not a single event like justification. God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in believers, acting as our Guide and Counsellor (John 14:26, Acts 2). We are refined and sanctified by trials that God allows us to go through, as gold and silver are purified by heating them (1 Peter 1:7). Throughout the process of sanctification, we must continually decide to surrender to the Spirit’s guidance in our lives, allowing Him to shape us into the image of Christ.

The final aspect of salvation is glorification, which will not be accomplished in this life. Those who believe will be glorified and made perfect images of Christ at the end of time, so that we may spend eternity in glory with God (Philippians 3:20-21). We can see an example of this after Christ’s resurrection, where Jesus appears in His glorified form (Luke 24). We do not know exactly what our own glorified bodies will look like, but they may have the scars of this life, as Jesus’ own risen body did (John 20:27). However, whatever they look like, will be free of pain and sorrow (Revelation 21:4). We must keep that in mind, following Paul’s example in “fighting the good fight (1 Timothy 6:12),” keeping Christ at the center of our lives always.

Hopefully, this (very lengthy) post gives you a greater understanding of how God’s plan for salvation came to fruition in the work of Christ. Our next educational post will deal with understanding God’s grace, through which God offers the gift of Salvation. If you have any questions or comments, we welcome them on this post, by email, or on our Facebook page.

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